Strategic Insights and Best Practices for 2025 Budgeting

And welcome to the strategic insights and best practices for twenty twenty five budgeting webinar. I'm glad you've all joined us for this discussion. As some of you might recall, last year, we hosted an event that covered budget preparation and recommendations for twenty twenty four. But as the last twelve months have flown by, we find ourselves looking forwards looking towards twenty twenty five in the coming weeks. Today's event, similar to last year's, will feature insights from experts with extensive experience in city and county management, as well as recommendations and best practices from funding and asset management professionals. We aim to provide a comprehensive view by incorporating experiences from both perspectives. Let's jump right in. Our moderator today is Chris Dejuneus, strategic strategic solutions consultant here at Brightly. Chris has worked in the SaaS industry since twenty eight two thousand and eight and joined Brightly when it was Duke Solutions in twenty fourteen. As an applications engineer, Chris keeps a close pulse on IT industry in government and education and consults with both clients and partners to help them overcome resource constraints and add valuable time back into their days. Welcome, Chris. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Tracy. Just wanna check. Can you hear me okay? Thumbs up? Alright. Perfect. You sound good. Alrighty. Well, I can tell you what. I am honored today to, moderate today's discussion. We have Allison and Megan from Withers Ravenel, and we're gonna explore how to best approach the twenty twenty five budget planning with a strategic long term view of your community's priorities to ensure that you're making the most of every dollar. Basically, hey, how do we get the most out of what we're spending? So first up, we have Allison Alexander. She's the client experience manager for Withers Ravenel. For nearly two decades, Allison has served in city and county management in the Carolinas for communities ranging in size from twenty two hundred to one hundred and sixty five thousand. Finance to impairing grants plan. She understands the challenges community leaders face with financial constraints, staff capacity and service demands. All things we're hearing on a regular basis. Next up, we have Megan. Megan Powell is the funding and asset management project manager manager for Withers Ravenel. Megan has a strong background working also with local governments in North Carolina. She has worked on grant administration for a r r a funds and sustainability projects that involve outreach to the community. As a budget manager and internal auditor, she manages a team responsible for Henderson County's annual one hundred and sixty six million dollars general fund. Her work involved developing best practices, policies, and procedures complying with local government budget and fiscal control act and ensuring compliance with all local state and federal laws. Megan also currently serves as the president of the North Carolina Local Government Budget Association. We're pleased to have both of them with us today to share their extensive knowledge and experience with us. So let's let's start this conversation off, shall we? Let's, start with Megan. Why don't you start us off with a brief summary of the typical local budgeting process and the challenges of the business as usual approach, which I think is, something we all run into. Thanks, Chris. So as everyone in local government knows right now, especially those of you that are in North Carolina, Budgeting is starting to kick off right now. And and we all know that budgeting is a year round process. It's not something that you only do in the springtime as you're getting ready to end your fiscal year. You're really working on that process year round. But right now in December, January, sometimes end end of February, we're really starting to kick that process off. You're starting to see some of maybe more of the public side of things, things you're talking about with your boards and elected officials, a little more publicly than some of the behind the scenes year round work that you do. You know? We always used to joke in budgeting that we could take off August and and that was it. But for the rest of the time, there's a lot of behind the scenes work that you're starting that public facing work right around now. A lot of times in local government, again, you're starting to hold these public facing workshops. And there's a schedule that if you're not familiar with it in North Carolina that you're required by law to maintain. A few of those dates that we've got coming up over the next fiscal year are to, obtain your request from your department heads, and that's on April thirtieth by law. You have to present your draft budget and budget message to your governing board by June one. At that same date, you also have to file a copy of your draft budget ordinance with your clerk to the board and make it available to the media. You need to schedule and host a public hearing. And, of course, we all know that adopt that budget has to be adopted to be able to get started on July one of each year. So that that's just in brief what budget looks like for a lot of people. We'll go into a little bit more detail later on about some of the things that you should be doing throughout that year long budget process to really start to make an impact with your public and with your Thank you. Good information. Alright. So, Allison, that gives us a good view of the current budget practices and challenges. What if we rewind the clock and look at this from your previous experience as a town and county manager? Really valuable insight you can bring. Can you provide an overview of some of the challenges related to funding and opportunities that other municipalities should keep in mind while planning their upcoming budgets? Sure. And I'd just like to say, I apologize in advance. My voice is squeaking in your ears. I'm getting over a cold and spent the weekend chaperoning a trip of thirty high schoolers, with some friends, and so that added to the the voice challenges. But when it comes to budgeting and kind of really your expense and expenditure request, I mean, we all know there's usually very few surprises that we have when it comes to the needs of the community and the organization. As Meaghan mentioned, the manager, the department head, you know the priorities of the elected officials, particularly priorities that are codified in the strategic plans and captured through council budget retreats. The challenges really come when you get newly elected officials into office, and they're going through their first or their second budget cycle where they really don't have the institutional knowledge of how that organization or service arrived at its priorities. And so some of the the key things that I'd like to to have in mind or, over the years was really how to present data and information to counsel. I've worked, when I was, an assistant manager with managers and board members who knew ninety percent of the time how budget priorities would shake out. But there's always a few wild cards you thrive on. They just throwing it out there during a meeting because they wanna get real time feedback. That's how I would try to interpret that at least. And so understanding your style and your preference on how to present information, but also those you work for and with before you walk into the room. And depending on where you are in an organization, you might be the one, setting the pace of orientation for newly elected members, or you might be along for the ride, but just understanding what that looks like before you walk into the budget retreats and the budget meetings with the elected officials. And then, another tip is if you're presenting options to the elected officials or the management team, be prepared for them to actually select one of those. I have an example from one of my first jobs where I was tasked with presenting options to, both take care of an underutilized building in an area of town, that needed some attention and then also help to alleviate some traffic issues on Main Street, two separate topics. But we came up with a radical option of relocating the finance department away from the manager in town hall, which was on Main Street. That was the option the council selected. And so then it would we had that moment where the manager, finance director, and I were all sitting in the council budget retreat going, oh, okay. We now have to make this happen, and we did. So, again, being aware that the, governing board, they they have their will and they have their way, as long as it's legal and you've gotta be ready to implement it. And then just a last tip again hitting on working with elected officials. Don't forget the importance of your state elected officials. They really wanna understand your local needs and challenges, and they can be a source of potentially of funding, but also regulatory regulatory challenges, but also opportunities. So if they have a conversation with you regularly and understand what roadblocks or opportunities might be available just with a tweak of a state law or, with, regulations, make sure you keep that in mind and have these relationships with them. And then just my last thing, I think we all know this, that local government staff are probably some of the higher consumers of state and national economic news, and you really have to be because that's where the surprises can come, which is on the revenue side. You have to be ready to pivot if there's signs of a recession or news of a slowdown in a local manufacturing plant. I know when I, had a utility system, we were always checking our major users because we wanted to know if there was a dip in their water, sewer, or electric usage because that can be an early indicator of potentially devastating news both for their employees, but also for your enterprise fund. And, no community budgets for the extreme, but just being able to clearly communicate needs and priorities to the board for your baseline and also to the general public is really key to being able to respond to a a shift in revenue like that. That's outstanding information. Really some good things to unpack there, Allison, especially at the end. I'm gonna keep you on the spot for a second here. Looking at early trends, the canary in the coal mine, right, or the the rose in the in the winery or in the, orchards. I'll give you a second to think on it because I'd love to know if there's any other early indicators that you look at for things like that from an economic evaluation standpoint. But, also, everything else you just laid out is fantastic. And I think is it fair to summarize and say, first of all, you need to know your audience. You have to have a compelling story to tell. And then, ultimately, you need to have a plan if you do catch the car. Right? If you're the dog catching the car, is that fair to say kind of breaking it into those three chunks? Yeah. I agree with all that. And, so you talk about early indicators. The other one that pops to mind is if, you have a landfill, tracking the waste disposal, that's actually a way, particularly with construction debris, of knowing where, construction is in your local economy. Again, that's very hyper focused. Tire recycling is another one. Again, for people purchasing new vehicles and maintaining the vehicles they have. Things that that people who don't work in this realm never think about. I joke that people who work in local government have the most boring vacation photos because they're filled with fire trucks and trash cans from other communities, But we're all interested in the infrastructure that we have, but also at the communities that we we visit, and try to learn from each other. To go back to your being prepared to to to act when you catch that car. Ideally, you know what car you're chasing and you know what's gonna happen, but there are times where you you think you're going after one if somebody hands you another one. I might let that analogy go now. But being, again, being able to tell your story and having that, really, that relationship with your coworkers in the organization, the elected officials, and then having, ways to communicate with the public both during a crisis and outside of a crisis where they will trust that you're telling them the truth about what's going on, economically both with your organization and with the community. I could keep you going, but I'm gonna I'm gonna let us keep moving. Yeah. Yeah. No. You remind me of myself. When I'm out cycling with friends sometimes, I think they get pretty tired of me on the greenways pointing out all the amazing stormwater infrastructure that allows it to be possible. Yes. So, kind of shifting here a bit. This is to both of you. Last year, we focused on setting clear monetary priorities and identify funding opportunities to improve community infrastructure and preparing for those future demands, something you just really kinda mentioned some almost deets on how to look at that demand, whether it's up or down. But as we look forward to twenty twenty five, what new and different aspects should we consider from a budgeting and funding perspective? And what lessons have you learned, that you'd like to share with the audience? So with that perspective, Allison, from your current role as a client experience manager, what conversations are you having with municipalities that you're interacting with, and what are the most important points you emphasize when speaking with leaders about getting their budgets off the ground? Well, as Megan laid out, well, she went over the schedule here in North Carolina. Also, when I was in South Carolina, traditionally, the second half of December is really, like, the less scheduled part of the year. You've got fewer meetings, more people on vacation. So this is really a good time to get a head start on where you are in the current budget, but it's also a good time to use for education time with elected officials. I know I keep hitting that on the head, but that is, a key part of a successful budget process, in capital planning. But the department heads and others who are in key positions should really be assisting with providing information for these key efforts. You don't wanna be, sitting in a department head or, practice area lead position and three months into the budget process, you bring up a key issue. That is really disheartening to management who then has to go to the elected officials and say, here's a big surprise that we didn't know about. So if you've got an inkling that something's coming up, just go ahead and start talking about it. One of the really common themes that I think we probably all hear is staff capacity. Meaghan, Chris, and I are all located in Western North Carolina, which was hit very hard by hurricane Helene, in September. And, staff capacity has really risen to the forefront for a lot of people as they're dealing with the bureaucracy, not just at their their own organizations, but state and federal levels as well. And so having a conversation with funding agencies, again, those elected officials, but other organizations and other local governments in your area about how to collaborate and work efficient efficiently together is really key. And then just, again, communication and, on a regular basis internally and externally are really the things the trends that I'm hearing here. Thank you. And, Megan, we'll go to you. So building off of that, what are some of the biggest challenges that you see between the budgeting teams and their local government leaders, or even technical staff when you start really expanding it out, do you have any recommendations, that that you would offer to help them start now? Yeah. Thanks. So to piggyback a little bit off of what Allison just said with hurricane, we when I was in Henderson County, we often had this kind of internal joke, and we would say, you know, there are no budgeting emergencies. Meaning that if we've done our job right, nobody should have those surprises like Allison was talking about. We should know what's coming. Yes. There's things that come up and we have to pivot and change, but it's not a budgeting emergency. Well, with the last three months, I think a lot of us have proven that theory completely wrong with hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina. But last week, I was, at the North Carolina Local Government Budget Association conference in Charlotte and had the opportunity to talk with budgeting officials from all over the state of North Carolina. And some of the insights that I gained from people that people are kind of currently experiencing, are sales tax revenue. I know in local government, that's one thing that you again, you can track off, all along. It's, again, a three month lag from the state with those numbers, but it's still a pretty good indicator of what's going on in community. Recently, we've seen in North Carolina specifically, a lot of the growth that we've experienced over the last couple years, we're not seeing that sky high growth that we've been seeing. There's things are still strong. There's a few counties where things things have kind of shifted in the opposite direction. But for the most part, people are growing but at a much smaller rate than they were in the past couple of years just in their sales tax. Some other things that can impact that in you and your community is if you get a large reimbursement from a nonprofit. Those are the kind of things that don't have to be done extremely regularly. They only have to be done once a year, and you can be tracking things and see great trends come along. And then, oop, all of a sudden, you've had a large nonprofit in your community ask for reimbursement, and that can change your numbers drastically. That does show the importance of tracking that information constantly. So that way, even if you do have that kind of big change in your trend, you're at least a little bit more aware of it and you're on top of it as soon as you're able to see it happen. Like we talked about earlier, it is a year round process, with with preparing your information. And these are the kinds of things again that you're doing year round. So as you're starting to do and getting into that process. Have your data to back up your why. We talked about staff capacity a little bit more and how in western part of the state, we've been really challenged with some of that. But on your regular basis, you need to say why. It's not I'm busy. In local government, if you're not busy, we probably need to evaluate your staffing capacity in another way, but why are you busy? Having that data to back it up as to why is really important in telling your story. Because, really, what is a budget in the the sense of things you're planning and you're telling a story with numbers? So having that why. This can be a simple spreadsheet of, how you can do things all the way up to a more complex thing like a life cycle monitor or or some software that can help you with that. There's a lot of different options for that that out there. But, saying, you know, again I'm gonna say this again one more time. Why? Tracking things, not just necessarily, what you're doing is, you know, what is an industry standard for how many building inspections you're supposed to do per day? If there's a standard, which there is a statewide standard, what are your building inspectors are doing? Are they doing on average that number, or are they doing double that? If they're doing double that, probably should look at the adding a building inspector to your to capacity. If they're not meeting that, that's one an economic indicator of what you're doing. But two, are your staff do you need to look at re you know, putting a staff member somewhere else or or things like that to make sure that you're staffed properly? So, again, use that data, communicate it often as you can, and and track things so you can show trends, show need, and have the data to back up while you're needing things. One other thing Allison and I kinda talked about when we were preparing for a little bit for this, you know, we talked about preparing for the one hundred questions, and you're likely gonna just get one. And that that does tag back into what we were talking about earlier with, what to do when you find that problem. But again, always being prepared as much as you possibly can to answer those questions to your board, to the public, and to your staff about what's going on. You're likely only ever gonna need to answer one or two, but just, again, having that information ready at hand for the hundred questions when you're gonna do one. Another thing to talk think about, especially when you're talking about things publicly with either the press or with with your board, making sure you have the right person up there speaking. I'll relay back to public works. A lot of times, your your field crew supervisors, they're the ones that know the details behind everything that's going on, and they can tell you everything that's happened. They can tell you every time that line broke, every time that storm water overflowed, and they know it all. They may not be the best person to get up and stand in front of the board to tell that information, to tell the story correctly and accurately the way you want it portrayed. So, again, making sure you have that right person out there. You may have that public work supervisor there to answer some of those detailed questions, but they may not need may not need to be the one necessarily leading that conversation in front of the board. But, again, goes back to what Allison was saying earlier. You know your board. You know their communication styles, and it may be the right fit. So, again, knowing that communication style preference, your board is is the best way to do that. Yeah. Again, really great points, and I'll I'll draw some parallels between your responses. Right? Again, we're looking at storytelling. You bring into the equation not just knowing your audience, but making sure you have the right person to communicate to the audience. When you hire a, you know, a treatment plan operator, you may not be looking at what what their public speaking capabilities are on a regular basis. These are all things that are important to consider because we're trying to bring facts over feelings to these discussions. So having a fact based approach with the right person to deliver the message and the right story to tell, seems to be a common theme that I'm hearing. Megan, to keep you on the spot here for a bit, you mentioned modeling. We've seen a lot of interesting developments with just that in general with that with that, technology. Is that something that you do regularly with your clients, go through some modeling exercises to show potentially risk or what can be accomplished with certain different financial strategies? It is. Some of the life cycle modeling software that's out there is just one of the things to me that I think is one of the coolest things that I get to do with my job is seeing that, seeing its capacity, seeing what it can show you, and how you can say, okay. This is how much we have to spend. What is that gonna do to our roads? What is that gonna do to our buildings, our infrastructure? That that data trend to me is just I think it's incredibly fascinating. But, you know, you can do modeling and everything. You can look at your history of your spending and budgeting and looking at your audits and forecast that out in the future, and that can be done in Excel. So, again, modeling is something that's incorporated in pretty much every aspect of what I do on our financial team, and it's incredibly fun to to look at and see those trends, and it's rewarding to be able to help communities go in there and and look from an exterior view, an impartial view, looking at just the numbers to see what's out there and show them what could happen, what might need to happen, and and play around with those different scenarios of what if what if we did this? What if we do that? What does that look like for our community? What does that look like for our tax rate, our revenues, our our our water rates, those types of things, to see what's out there as your options. And, again, it's it's looking at the numbers to see what's out there. I love it. Yeah. Also a big fan of what modeling brings to the table. It's not a silver bullet, but it gives you options, allows you to visualize the impact of the decisions you're going to make. And like you commented earlier, and sometimes what's a highly politicized environment, we need a way to cut through with facts. And modeling is a good option to just bring additional fact to the table. Great, Rick. Great responses. Really appreciate both of you here. We're getting towards the top of the hour. So, you know, Allison, I'd love to bring you back in if you have any closing comments. Also, Megan, please, take us home. Sure. I would just like to to add that, you know, as we go through the budget, we're always seasoned. We're always, forward looking and talking about, potentially problems to solve or, services to improve. But just remember, also celebrate project milestones and wins along the way. A lot of time we skip over that, particularly if it's, something that's not externally facing or public facing. You know, we'll have ground break breakings and building dedications, but successfully, celebrating or marking technology implementations, that's a huge deal. Anyone who's ever done a software conversion understands how important that is and how much effort goes into it. And then even as as Megan was talking through with the modeling, I can remember the feeling of satisfaction when I finally had a list where I knew what we owned. And that's a big deal for your organization and for your elected officials. So just making sure you note that and say we're gonna we're we're better now, and we're gonna be able to continue to grow. And then making sure that for some of those key key milestones, key key project wins, you really celebrate those, communicate those with the broader public so that they also understand what their dollars, what their money is going towards to helping their organization, their community be better. And I'll end on good luck to everyone on their budget. It's never easy. Even when it feel people think it should be, it never is. So good luck. Well said. Well said. Yeah. Megan, anything on your end? I would echo Allison's sentiment of celebrating those small milestones, because, again, there's some of those things, the technology, some of those smaller things and individual milestones are they're not the thing that are bright and shiny that the public likes to see as much, but they're incredibly important to your staff, and your community. And and those tools are so important to be able to use to grow and to become a better community. So, that's one thing I would definitely echo. And and good luck. It's a marathon, not a sprint with this process. You gotta keep up that energy for the the crazy, evenings and, weekends. Hopefully not many of those in, the April, March, May time time frame for most people, and and keep it going to do something great for your community. Alright. Well, thank you both very much. Excellent. Thank you all. That was really interesting and and informative conversation. Takeaways to, to go help them with their budgeting this year. For the audience, we will be sending you a recording of this presentation within twenty four hours, and we'll also send you an email that'll have opportunity for you to come back and and ask questions and and pursue this information further with these three very knowledgeable speakers. So hopefully, you got a lot out of today's webinar. Thank you, Chris, Megan, and Allison. Really appreciate you being here and spending some time with us. And unless there's any further comments you have, Chris, we'll go ahead and close. All good. Thank you very much, everyone. Awesome. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.